Ever wanted to stop an oil rig?

Posted by jamess — 3 November 2010 at 2:01pm - Comments

Now's your chance to stop an oil rig. Well, quite a few really.

Right now, in the corridors of Brussels, our politicians and civil servants are haggling over our future. Specifically the future of our oil consumption.

We know the vast majority of oil is used in transport, and that's why the forthcoming European decisions on emissions targets for vans and cars are so important to our Go Beyond Oil campaign.

There's word that our Transport Secretary - Philip Hammond - is planning to weaken the UK's position in these negotiations. We calculate that the the current position on vans - as agreed by the last government - would reduce our future oil consumption in the UK by 3.6 million barrels per year (see below for the geeky calculations). That's a lot of oil drilling.

We can't let Philip Hammond water down this position - particularly as a minister in a government that brands itself the "greenest ever". Let him know how important it is to stick to a strong position on these targets.

The only reason for Hammond to slip on the UK position is because of pressure from big car manufacturers. We've heard from friends in Brussels that car giants like Toyota are leaning on our politicians to make them cave in to their demands.

It's ridiculous. A strong emissions target for vans is a win-win-win situation. It's good for the climate, it's good for the environment and it's good for business: average van users would save hundreds of pounds a year on reduced fuel costs.

But Hammond is considering ignoring all this in a bid to please these big car manufacturers. These corporate giants are lobbying hard because they know that next year is the bigger brother of the vans legislation: cars.

Toyota and others know that if they can get European politicians to slide over the vans battle, they can push the cars targets back even further next year.

We can't let that happen. Please take three minutes out of your day to push Philip Hammond for a strong European law on vehicle emissions. It's worth millions of barrels a year. And that's a lot of oil drilling.

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Geeky calculation: The government has forecast that if the EU legislation set a target for the average emissions from Light Goods Vehicles (vans) of 175g CO2 per km by 2016 and 135g CO2 per km by 2020, this would deliver annual CO2 savings of around 1.5MtCO2 in the UK. We have assumed that diesel creates 2.64kg of CO2 per litre burned, so burning around 380 litres of diesel creates 1 tCO2. If we assume there are the equivalent of 160 litres per barrel, then 1 tCO2 = 2.38 barrels. So 1.5 MtCO2 = approximately the equivalent of 3.6 million barrels.

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